Medical freedom encountered a disappointing setback on Friday. We were so close. The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported, “DeSantis criticizes House for not passing ‘medical freedom’ bill.” Apparently, House legislators got the heebie jeebies after the Florida DOH reported 132 measles cases so far for 2026— even though most were from a single ‘outbreak’ at Ave Maria College. Chillingly, in 2020, only 5 measles cases were reported nationwide. After the Orlando Sentinel warmed up its virus-dictionary-of-doom and ran pictures of third-world children dripping with measles, the House blinked.
The House didn’t blink because of a measles outbreak. It blinked because of a measles headline.
The Florida House let its legislative session expire on Friday without bringing the medical freedom bill —a bill that had already passed the state’s senate— to the floor for a vote. “It seems to me you’re fumbling right on the goal line here,” DeSantis said afterwards. “Punch it in for the touchdown and get it done,” he encouraged. “I know a lot of people in Florida really want to see these protections written into law.”
He was right. The bill was incredibly popular even though it had been watered down. The current version stopped short of what DeSantis and Surgeon General Joe Ladapo had originally asked for— repealing all vaccine mandates in the state. Instead, it would have expanded existing vaccine exemptions for public K-12 schools, and created a new “conscience” category for parents to opt out of immunizations without requiring them to invoke a religious objection.
It would have also made ivermectin available over the counter in Florida.
DeSantis said he would try again during the budget process, which comes next. DeSantis’ term expires in November, and he isn’t running for re-election, having termed out. Can he get it done before he leaves? If not, will his successor have the same spine?
💉 House lawmakers appear to have been spooked by the terrifying figure of 132 measles cases. In a March 5th Miami Herald op-ed, ‘conservative’ Editorial Board member Mary Anna Mancuso applauded the House’s decision to table the bill. “Like most conservatives,” she began, “I like my government limited and freedom abundant.” A good start, but apparently she doesn’t like her freedom that abundant: “But freedom without good judgment isn’t conservatism — it’s reckless.”
The measles statistic surfaces in every single story and op-ed about vaccines in Florida. It’s practically being dragged around on banners behind small planes. 132 cases! But we already know their tricks. Remember the great “covid cases” scam? First of all, what counts as a “case?” In this glorious age of hypersensitive PCR tests, they don’t even need symptoms for it to count as a ‘case.’ And the state does not currently track hospitalizations for measles, so we don’t know whether the 132 cases were mild, severe, or undetectable to the naked eye.
Zero measles deaths are currently reported. So.
They keep comparing the 132 “cases” to 2020’s “five national measles cases.” That is also a sham. 2020 was the lockdown year, schools were closed, and nobody cared about measles anyway. The five cases reported in 2020 were an absurd outlier, unmatched in years before or after. Critics of medical freedom also cite antique fatality figures from pre-vaccine eras, rather than the current U.S. measles case‑fatality rate, which has been on the order of 1 death out of many hundreds of cases.
Virus hysteria is back. The Orlando Sentinel op‑ed, for instance, explicitly and insanely framed measles vaccination as a “life and death responsibility,” and even equated easing jab exemptions with the “freedom to drink and drive,” as if any non‑maximal vaccine policy stance is homicidal recklessness.
By the Sentinel’s logic, letting parents choose their kids’ pediatrician is the ‘freedom to practice medicine without a license,’ and packing your own lunch is the ‘freedom to commit food safety violations.’ Give me a break.
Instead, if anything, Florida’s 2026 ‘surge’ so far —132 reported cases and zero reported deaths— portrays a risk profile that looks nothing like the 1950s pre‑vaccine era and everything like a localized outbreak in a largely immune population. It’s less remarkable how many cases there were, compared to how few. In other words, the ‘outbreak’ didn’t spread very far. That says something. Natural immunity works.
Florida legislators need to scrape their courage off the floor, buck up, and follow DeSantis’s lead. Did we learn nothing during covid about how easily disease statistics are manipulated? The biomedical fascist brigades are lying about measles risk and are reporting more aggressively to manufacture a case. Their budgets depend on it. Don’t be fooled again.
💉💉💉
There’s something else Florida’s legislators should consider. Vaccines often suck. Yesterday, ABC-7 New York ran a story below the deadpan headline, “Flu vaccines didn’t work that well in the US, officials find.” Ruh-roh. The most common vaccine in the country failed. Again.
Well, we appreciate the candor, at least. Sort of. “Didn’t work that well” is doing some heroic lifting in that headline. That’s like describing the Hindenburg as a flight that ‘didn’t land that well,’ calling the Titanic a cruise that ‘ended a bit early,’ or describing Pompeii as a town that ‘had some rough weather.’
The truth is much worse than not working that well.
ABC reported that, among adults, the vaccine was only 22% to 34% effective at preventing doctor or hospital visits. For comparison, the CDC considers a good year to be at least 40-60% effectiveness. So this year crashed below the floor of what officials themselves define as adequate. It was one of the worst effectiveness rates in more than a decade— which is saying something, since effectiveness already dips below 50% in most years.
As ever, it was designed for the wrong variant. The culprit, according to the CDC, was a new H3N2 variant ominously labeled “subclade K.” Subclade K was found in 83% of the flu samples the CDC tested, and it was “antigenically distinct” from the strain the vaccine was built to fight. It’s like studying for a history exam and getting a pop quiz on calculus. Every year, for twenty years, and then being told this time, the teacher promises it will be on the test.
Good luck with your number two pencil.
The flu vaccine is reformulated every single year. That’s the sales pitch. Unlike childhood vaccinations, which used to be one-and-done, the flu shot is supposed to be annually upgraded to match whatever strains the World Health Organization predicts will circulate. It’s the one vaccine where they openly admit they’re just guessing.
And … they guessed wrong. Again. The ugly truth is, it’s never worked particularly well. No one can point to a single season where the flu vaccine was, say, 85%+ effective. Not one. The best claimed years max out at just over 50/50. In 2018, a gold-standard Cochrane Review published a study finding only a “modest” 1% decrease in the likelihood of catching the flu among patients who took the vaccine.
New York State declared this the most intense flu season in at least twenty years, recording over 71,000 positive cases in a single week in late December— the most ever recorded since flu became reportable in 2004. NYC alone topped 146,000 cases by February. Four children died of flu in New York City this season. (None died from measles, though. But sure, let’s get hysterical about measles.)
It’s almost like New York is suffering from some kind of immune suppression or something. Weird. But I digress.
Now, a reasonable person might wonder: if the vaccine is custom-built every year, and the effectiveness still bounces between 19% and 60% depending on whether the WHO’s crystal ball was having a good day, maybe the modelis the problem. We don’t tolerate 22% effectiveness in seatbelts, body armor, sunscreen, or restaurant hygiene inspections. (‘Come for the street tacos, stay for the Montezuma’s revenge!’)
We’d laugh a contractor out of the room if he told us the roof he just installed had a 34% chance of keeping the rain out. But for flu vaccines, we’re supposed to line up every October and hope this is one of the good years?
The pattern is always the same. In the fall: “Get your flu shot!” In the spring: “Well, it didn’t work that well, but you should still get it next year.” Rinse, repeat, and never question the model. Charlie Brown, meet Lucy. She promises she’ll hold the virus right this time.
Meanwhile, the agency that spent a decade insisting we were cuckoo for questioning vaccine effectiveness just published a study confirming that questioning vaccine effectiveness was entirely justified. Think they’ll update the misinformation guidelines to reflect that? Any minute now. Any minute.
